A bumper issue this month with L.K. Sharma dissecting the current state of the political scene in India; Andrea Baranes the President of the Fondazione Culturale Responsabilità Etica of the Banca Etica network looks into the relationship between finance and the environment; Gerry Hassan the writer, commentator and academic examines Britain's eternal imperial mindset and Geoffrey Heptonstall, poet, playwright and essayist, discusses why the career of Orson Welles continues to raise questions about the relation of imaginative art to popular culture and much more...

"There is this idea that one needs to re-locate in order to decentralize. Moving away into open land, away from urban areas, away from the civil perimeters of town and community; this can be advantageous but also be isolating and misleading." Essay by Carlos Cuellar Brown, a New York City artist and essayist.

Finance should be a tool at the service of the economy. It should be the ‘money market’ where supply and demand for money meet. A significant portion of the financial system however has transformed from being a tool, to being an end in itself: to make money from money in the shortest possible time, losing sight of its social purpose.

For two decades, the world seemed to be convinced that all indicators pointed in the same direction: more democracy, more economic openness, more human rights, more international cooperation. Not anymore.